Staying on Top of the Games

As an English teacher I’ve always been an advocate of requiring my students to only complete tasks that I am capable of doing myself. Perhaps this is common sense and/or common practice for most teachers. After all, a high school English teacher with a bachelors degree should be able to do high school level work. But prior to giving out an assignment, I will actually do the work myself. This gives me a good idea of the steps involved from start to finish, anticipate problems or concerns, and provides the class with a perfect example of what the finished product should look like. So when I read the criteria for the PRABE assignment, I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to acquaint myself with books popular among middle and high school students. I’ve always been an avid, albeit slow reader – it took me almost the entire summer to read The Aenid by Virgil. I am also a regular skimmer of various news publications like The New York Times and The Bangkok Post, but as an ELA teacher I do believe it’s important for me to be a shining example of extreme literacy – so I feel the urge to step it up a notch. I spent some time recently observing secondary level ELA classes and decided that if I was going to be this “shining example” I would need to acquaint myself with the recommended literature at this level. I checked the Common Core Standards for ELA book recommendations for middle and high school students and saw on this list The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I began a slow reading of The Hunger Games and made it to page 85 by the third week. Though I’ve never been much of an avid sci-fi fantasy reader, I’ve since fallen into Katniss Everdeen’s survival adventure on the ultimate reality show and have been swept up by the story’s plot. I can see why kids are fascinated with the story. The actual setting is a futuristic North American landscape that is easy to imagine and with the popularity of reality shows among teenagers, a fight to the death on live television does not seem too far off. The story is also narrated by the voice of the 16-year old protagonist Katniss, who is an easily identifiable sympathetic character. This is all great stuff, but I am beginning to wonder how this book ended up on the list of Common Core Standards ELA recommendations?